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Indonesia’s LGBTQ couples fear Parliament will make their love a crime

Indonesia’s LGBTQ couples fear Parliament will make their love a crime

LGBTQ citizens of Indonesia are worried that legislators who are working on an extensive revision of the nation’s criminal code might make forms of LGBTQ sexual activity a criminal offense.

Indonesian trans rights advocate Febby Damayanti meets with three trans women at their rented accommodation in Surabaya, Indonesia. (Anindya Joediono photo courtesy of This Week in Asia)

Indonesia has no national law against homosexual activity but the nation is included in this site’s list of 71 countries with anti-LGBTQ laws because such laws are on the books in Aceh Province, South Sumatra Province and several Indonesian cities.

Earlier this month, DW.com reported on possible changes in Indonesia’s criminal code in an article titled “Indonesia’s LGBTQ community fears crackdown under legal reforms”.  A modestly edited version of the article is reprinted below:

Indonesia’s LGBTQ community fears crackdown under legal reforms

Mohammad Mahfud Mahmodin[, commonly known as Mahfud MD, Indonesia’s coordinating security affairs minister (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Indonesia’s lawmakers are working on reforming the country’s criminal code under a draft bill, known in the country by the acronym RKUHP. The reforms are an attempt to sweep out a colonial era criminal justice system, but there is concern the reforms will be used to make more types of  conduct illegal.

That is why LGBTQ rights activists are worried new legal standards could be used to penalize and persecute same-sex couples.

Same-sex couples in Indonesia cannot legally marry. The law states that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, as husband and wife. However, there is also no specific law prohibiting or penalizing a same-sex relationship between two consenting adults.

The community’s concerns come precisely because of the ambiguity.

“There is no LGBTQ wording in the RKUHP,” Indonesia’s coordinating security affairs minister, Mohammad Mahfud MD, said in a tweet. “But there are threats for offenses against decency and same-sex intercourse in certain situations and ways. Same as there is no word ‘thief’ in the criminal code, but there are acts of taking other people’s things unlawfully.”

Conservative Islamic lawmaker Amin Akram told DW by text message that his Prosperous Justice Party wants the bill ratified “immediately” and says there are plans to pass it by July 2022.

In 2019, Indonesian students protest firing of journalists over article about a lesbian relationship. (Apriadi Gunawan photo courtesy of Jakarta Post)

Why is the LGBTQ community concerned?

The tweet from Mahfud MD has raised concern within the LGBTQ community and among legal activists, even if LGBTQ people are not specifically mentioned in the bill.

Indonesian lawyer and public defender Ma’ruf Bajammal questioned the government’s commitment to combating discrimination and to protecting the human rights of citizens.

“The state should not criminalize a person only based on their sexual orientation,” Bajammal, who works for the legal non-profit organization Community Legal Aid, told DW.

Atang Irawan, a law lecturer at Pasundan University in West Java province, encouraged the government to conduct a transparent public discussion on the issue before the bill is ratified.

“For those who are against it, they are of the opinion that the state goes too deep into regulating morality. They think it is too much for the state to intervene with the private rights of its citizens,” Irawan told DW. That’s why further discussion is needed, he said.

Men hide their faces at a press conference in 2017 in Indonesia after being caught in a police raid on a gay sauna in Jakarta. (Photo courtesy of Southeast Asia Globe)
Men hide their faces at a press conference in 2017 in Indonesia after being caught in a police raid on a gay sauna in Jakarta. (Photo courtesy of Southeast Asia Globe)

Why is Indonesia voting on legal reform?

Indonesia has been trying to renovate its Dutch colonial era criminal code since the 1960s. The last attempt to ratify this particular RKUHP bill was in September 2019.

However that was postponed after massive protests broke out throughout Indonesia, mostly led by student groups.

The bill would have made “defaming” public figures, institutions and religion an offense. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country by population. It would also have prohibited premarital sex and included “morality” clauses.

According to a public version of the draft seen by DW, it is the proposed article in RKUHP on “fornication” that has raised concerns among local LGBTQ groups.

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Protesters hold up signs prior to passage of a new Indonesian criminal code that will ban sex outside marriage, cohabitation between unmarried couples, insulting the president, and expressing views counter to the national ideology, outside parliament in Jakarta, Indonesia, December 5, 2022. (Willy Kurniawan photo courtesy of Reuters)

This proposed article said that anyone who commits “obscene acts against other people who are of the different or same sex” could be fined and face imprisonment from 18 months to nine years. The definition of “obscene” would apply if the act is conducted in public, forcibly with violence or threats of violence, or is published as pornographic content.

Conservative lawmaker Akram said sex between two same-sex single adults would be punishable under the bill if it was conducted in public.

“If [the sexual act] is conducted secretly, you cannot be prosecuted,” he added.

Merry, a trans woman in Surabaya, Indonesia, lives on income from her small eatery, supplemented by busking. (Anindya Joediono photo courtesy of This Week in Asia)

Growing intolerance against Indonesia’s LGBTQ community

Although Indonesia has traditionally embraced diversity and many locals practise tolerance toward people with different sexual orientations if they are discreet about it, intolerance towards the LGBTQ community has grown over the past few years. [Conservative Muslim areas such as Aceh Province, governed by sharia law, are a prominent exception to that traditional tolerance.]

In 2016, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission, a regulatory body for local media, issued a regulation prohibiting all broadcasters from showing men behaving in a feminine way, including dressing in drag or wearing cosmetics. This deprived many artists of income.

A recent podcast by an Indonesian celebrity, Deddy Corbuzier, stirred public anger on Twitter. Corbuzier interviewed a gay Indonesian man named Ragil Mahardika and his German husband, Frederik Vollert, about their life as a gay couple in Germany.

Soon after, the hashtag #UnsubscribePodcastCorbuzier was trending on Twitter, leading Corbuzier to take down the interview and issue a public apology.

On May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia, the British embassy in Jakarta sparked controversy by raising a rainbow flag. The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the ambassador and asked the embassy staff to be mindful of the host country’s culture, local media reported.

Anti-LGBT protest in Indonesia. (Photo courtesy of AFP)
Anti-LGBT protest in Indonesia in 2018. (Photo courtesy of AFP)

 

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